News, Commentary and Insights from the Flash Player and AIR Product and Engineering Teams

Adobe AIR on iPad

After queuing for an hour at the flagship Apple Store in SF this morning, we finally got our hands on a stack of magical devices. We’ve spent the rest of the day having fun getting the first Adobe AIR apps running on the iPad.

Alright. Enough. I’m really sick of seeing Adobe discuss their IN-HOUE ONLY ability to develop things for the iPhone and iPad. This Packager project of yours has been floating in the air for months! I’ve been trying to get answers regarding this on the forums for months myself. Nothing. Not a word. Zero.

My opinion – STOP showing how great your private, exclusive in-house tools are. What’s the point? If you’re going to keep doing this – how about at least giving SOME indication of when this is going to get out to those people who don’t sit in an Adobe office room.

Alright. Enough. I’m really sick of seeing Adobe discuss their IN-HOUE ONLY ability to develop things for the iPhone and iPad. This Packager project of yours has been floating in the air for months! I’ve been trying to get answers regarding this on the forums for months myself. Nothing. Not a word. Zero.

My opinion – STOP showing how great your private, exclusive in-house tools are. What’s the point? If you’re going to keep doing this – how about at least giving SOME indication of when this is going to get out to those people who don’t sit in an Adobe office room.

Adobe has set the standard and always will. How easy for me to built app for so many platform with a language i have been using for years. Who ever said flashplayer was over wasn’t talking about now..maybe never..The funny thing is that, most of the Ajax app you see are mock ups of flash and flex developers. The take the best and try to mimic what we been doing for years. Flash player has come a long way and now AIR. Adobe keep surprising us, am proper happy to be a part of this.

You can’t blame Adobe if you haven’t shown your interest before. Their iPhone stuff is work in progress, you can’t expect them to release every such project on Labs site. Either take time and participate in prerelease programs, or wait until public release.

Jason, Adobe has been pretty clear that this functionality will be coming out in Flash CS5. Also recently Adobe has a reveal of CS5 products on Monday, April 12th. Based on the CS3 and CS4 launches, this means CS5 should be out either at the end of April or more likely the beginning of May.

While some on this thread have complained about the availability of tools Adobe is testing is pre-release, I find it more telling that the Adobe crew had to stand in line to get units on the iPad. I would think that Apple would have sent a few over for them to review and test software with before now (as they have with other content producers). Perhaps they did, but this article seems to indicate “first time” scenarios with the iPad. It a shame that Apple has seemingly snubbed Adobe again.

My primary interest is to see the iPad Packager tools for Flash Builder 4, not the Flash CS5 IDE. What I find astounding is that a 3rd party has already implemented their own near-release solution to bringing Flex 3 applications to the iPad.

How is it that a 3rd party can be this far on a product like this and there hasn’t been a single thing offered to Flex and Flash Builder developers by Adobe itself?

While Apple continues to spit in Adobe’s face, you’ve got quite a few developers who want nothing more than to even the score a bit and get their ideas on those devices. How about, instead of more obscure news and demonstrations of what Adobe employees are doing – why don’t you announce what you’ve got planned for Flash Builder developers on this subject.

I am signed up for the Adobe Prerelease Program by the way. I’ve yet to receive that email letting me to know I can download a pre-release build of Flash Builder 4 with iPad Packager features.

As David points out, Adobe has announced the mobile Flex framework called Slider. Adobe are looking to push it out the second half of 2010. A bit vague on the release date, but that’s typical of all software companies. Software companies don’t want their competitors to know their release dates and the nature of developing complex programs makes it hard to hit an exact release date, when it’s unknown what obstacles they will hit.

However, hopefully we will see a beta released before the final version of Slider is released. Perhaps Adobe is waiting for Flash CS5 to be released with the iPhone packager before the Slider is released as beta?

The point is that you don’t know. I see more question marks on these comments than anything.

In my opinion there was a real opportunity in getting Slider capabilities into Flash Builder 4 BEFORE the iPad was released. How nice it would have been to see some of the first, and best, iPad applications made with Adobe software.

So, Flash Builder developers, just sit back and continue to be shown what you can’t do. If you have an idea for something, just send it to the Adobe AIR team so they can build it for you – and maybe put it on the iTunes store (right now)

Stop waiting for Adobe and use all the other technologies available to you. The product development cycles just get longer and more expensive every year. I ditched Flash development a long time ago because of it’s proprietary nature and lack of openness.

In addition, these AIR applications just look really bad. They lack core design aesthetics. They are basically flat and boring Flash animations you find all over the web. Where’s the loading bar and the “Skip Intro” button? Will we get that too on our iPads and iPhones?

You’re right. The iPhone SDK is, in fact, there for building applications for Apple’s devices. Some of the applications I’ve seen for the iPad are truly astounding. None of which were built using Adobe tools. I just see so much potential in AIR and Flash. The idea of leveraging what we already know using the Adobe tools to push our work on portable / mobile devices is very appealing. I’ve not given up hope yet but it is a shame that there has to be so much ambiguity, mystery and delay.

Now that Mr. Negative is gone, I want to say that what you’ve shown is very impressive! If you’ve ever tried to develop anything with the iPhone SDK, you know what a PITA it is for garbage collection, memory management in general, and doing anything with the UI that doesn’t march locked in step with the Apple Interface Guidelines (1984 anyone?). I’m really excited to use Adobe apps to develop not only for the iFamily, but for other devices and platforms as well. That “little panorama app” is a great example of harnessing the power of the iPad. Those distortion effects don’t come cheap, and the performance is great. It would be great to have the source to learn from. Keep up the great work!

Have you tried developing with the new Titanium application from Appcelerator? Of all the companies creating iPhone development apps, this is by far the most promising. I’m not promoting it by any means, but it’s the best I have used.

If you have knowledge of Java, HTML and CSS, then it’s supposed to be a great tool for developing iPhone and iPad applications, plus it’s Free and Open Source.

response: if you can’t wait then build your own solution in Objective C else wait like the rest of us for Adobe to make our lives easier (again). The web and technology was turned so many people into spoiled babies.

@ Adobe AIR team: Looking good! Its going to be a huge win if Flash dev makes it into the iPad on a grand scale. I plan to be part of that push.

As a follow up, I understand your frusration with Adobe, but realize that it doesn’t matter how much you yell and scream at them, because it normally falls on deaf ears and you will be told that it’s your fault. It’s been my experience in the past that I got little to no support on software issues.

As a result, I’ve decided to ween myself off Adobe products. Adobe is too big and cares too little for the average person. It’s time again for small developer shops to lead the way to great innovation and customer service. Sorry Adobe, but you guys are out of touch with your base.

If that is the case, then Adobe will be showing their hand too soon and allowing Apple (the most admired company in the world BTW) to make strong arguments against Flash.

Adobe will make the general public aware that they want to force a proprietary and closed piece of software onto consumers who should rely on web standard-compliance that has an open, diverse and ever increasing developer community. I will have lost further respect for Adobe and use their products less and less if this lawsuit goes through.

Um…Apple, the most admired company in the world? Was that on some Apple blog? How is code that runs native on the iPhone forcing proprietary and closed software on consumers. Flash Player is not running on the iPhone, rather Adobe’s development environment creates an iPhone app.

This is a rather lame move, but regardless as a developer of both standards based HTML/CSS (w/ Javascript/PHP) and a Flash developer I look forward to CS5 and other tablets that have a forward facing camera and run Flash. If Apple releases such a device, so much the better.